Modmen Lack Game Knowledge

There are plenty of systems in place preventing these mistakes, which include tests and quizzes, documents to help us identify rule breakers. The Staff Management team also uses examples from common mistakes other moderators make. All current StM members have been on the mentoring assistance subteam for at least multiple months if not years and they tend to see the mistakes mods commonly make to help prevent these mistakes from happening again.

Coming from a moderator who has been on the staff team for a total (including the time before resignation and after) of about 6 months. I still on the daily reference documents, ask other staff members for opinions and talk to Rules Committee members. I also still give incorrect punishments every once and a while. When staff members punish hundreds of people each week, regardless of their rank, incorrect punishments are going to happen. Obviously, we always aim for getting rid of these incorrect punishments, but they will happen and tend to teach staff members how to avoid the same mistakes or similar mistakes in the future.

Anti-Cheats also give false punishments. There is no perfect Anti-Cheat. We also try to eliminate those punishments as well. However, the reason that we cannot ban certain closet hacks is not that we "aren't smart enough", it's because many closet hacks are difficult to gather evidence for. I'd additionally like to say that all staff members are expected to deal with every rule breaker they see, including closeters, and to gather evidence. Just because we cannot give punishments for these hacks, doesn't mean we can't do anything about them.

I know I've personally talked to you about this before, and if this is the case on other threads, I recommend contacting a Forum Management member, as threads should never be deleted because we are "offended". If you feel you have any more questions after your thread was locked because it was addressed, feel free to contact any of us (staff team).

 

I think this is why game specialization for hardcore games must be apart of the trainee "syllabus". While the current system works, it has holes in its structure that fail to train mentees. Staff are not required to play all games: this means they will inevitably lack knowledge in (and thus avoid) games which they have not held interest in. The first step to fixing this is making sure trainees play all games; having mentors keep tabs on their stats and reminding them kindly to check out all games. More QOTD's geared towards niche games such as SSM, MS, Champions, or BR would also help in this case, as it forces mentees to garner basic moderation skills in said game modes. Lastly - just train them! Have a set schedule in which trainees are taught necessary skills, games, and tips every week. It should not take more than thirty minutes once a week, and would just be a little meeting where mentors go over important skills and moderation tips for different games. Mentors could even draw upon staff with better experience in those games for moderation tips, and have preset guides on what to look out for. StM could even ask some experienced players - perhaps staff that have SSM wins, or players/ex-staff that know what to look out for, to make them a document filled with tips and tricks specifically for moderators.

I've seen this happen to Kuhn, Artie, Egg, Torcho, and now you, ducky. I know this isn't a common occurrence, but a massive server such as MP should aim to eradicate any chance of false bans. All of these player's I've listed have thousands, if not tens of thousands of wins - their experiences should attest to the fact that there is inherently a lack of knowledge for games that have a higher skill curve, and that it could be avoided with basic training. I'm sure staff are quite busy, but a few steps incorporated into the trainee program could greatly mitigate the chances of a false ban!

 

No - I said nothing like that. I agreed with you. What I said was that you can't expect moderators to be knowledgeable in every single game, and that because that is so there are ways they can communicate to each other in-game for second opinions and whatnot.

What I also said which you completely twisted is that I, personally, didn't go near Champions or Minestrike reports because I didn't trust myself to not potentially false punish someone unless someone is being completely and utterly blatant. I also said that I always got second opinions for those or forwarded them to someone that knows what they are talking about.

Firstly, not every staff member can answer forum reports. That's reports patrol. Applications for the team are not open 24/7. They're open every couple of months. The people that want extra report responsibilities go for it.

As for /reports, as I said before, I did them - a lot of Moderators do them. There are internal leaderboards staff make up for most /reports answered each month. More staff do them than you think; thousands are answered every month. Unfortunately just over half that are submitted are answered, but forum reports on the other hand are always always always all answered. Some might take longer if it's for something like Inapp name, reach, etcetc as that needs RC/QA but they get answered.

There are quotas as a Moderator. If you don't reach them, you do face consequences. Don't think monitors/mentors don't expect a Trainee/Mod to moderate. Of course they do.

For your first point, these are completely different things. You're saying "all or nothing" here. Either they know every single game and can therefore punish literally everywhere, or they are forced to stay within the 3 games they play consistently and are forbidden from punishing anywhere else. That is a system that will never work.

Would you be a voluntary staff member if someone told you "oh, by the way, you can only apply if you play every single one of our 20 games regularly"? I know I wouldn't. I agree with you that staff should have general knowledge of every game/the rules...that is encouraged, taught, and practiced, although I agree that probably not enough. Sven replied to this thread and began working on an SSM game feature document for staff members in order to help with this a little bit. I never denied your argument, however. I mentioned multiple, multiple times in my response that a certain number of hacks or rule offenses are very blatant and easily distinguishable from normal behaviour in games. To recap for you: This includes but is most certainly not limited to:

• fly
• bhop
• speed
• ghosting
• kill aura
• exploiting
• certain types of game trolling

Many staff members will punish for these already. Once again, if they are not sure, they are free to contact any other staff for assistance. Furthermore you also threw the bold statement that "unless you have never made and will never make a mistake in your life you should not be a staff member". Once again, how do you expect people to want to moderate for you? Staff members will make mistakes which get fixed. If they keep repeating, the staff may suffer consequences, and in extreme cases, this can lead to getting demoted. Don't think that because a staff member incorrectly punished you/a friend once, that the entire staff team is terrible, lacks structure, has 0 knowledge of the game and should get completely reworked because the system is not working and is making the experience terrible. On a grander scale, the ratio of mistakes to justified punishments/actions is pretty negligible. The resources are out there for players - appeal false punishments or report a staff member by creating a ticket if they are abusing their power.

I agree staff members should have general knowledge of popular games like SSM which is why a lot do and also why Sven replied to this thread saying that he'll try to come up with some sort of doc outlining main gameplay features to emphasize this. There are people on your side, do not think I am arguing against what you are saying - I completely agree. And yes, there are staff that ignore calls for help for reasons I don't know. No way do I support this type of behaviour, especially if they are sitting in Lobby-1. I've seen staff that get tagged, they respond asking what the player wants, the player tells them of a hacker and the mod is not heard from again and instead keeps sitting in the lobby. There are inconsistencies and I want to fight for them to be gotten rid of as much as possible as well.

I don't know how long you guys are taking to write an appeal but if you have evidence that your punishment is false it can take you a solid 15 min to submit an appeal with the evidence following the guide and format and if you did so chances are the appeal will get accepted.

If you don't have evidence your appeal can take a little bit longer but if you read my response properly you would note how I said that staff are pretty much required to revoke your punishment if there is no evidence against you as well.

You said appeals get denied more often than I think - where are the numbers? Tag any appeals team member on this thread and they will tell you so many appeals get accepted and the ones that do not usually don't follow the appeal guide which is linked in front of them as they are writing the appeal. I'd like to note how you also stated that after literally confirming that both of your false GWEN punishment appeals got accepted with no issues. It's possible then, is it not?

 

I literally resigned from staff because of this and it's still happening. Gotta love this server!

Yeah staff need to revamp, or at least include more methods of training. "Our training is well-rounded and flexible" or "Trainees are encouraged to play all games" are nowhere near adequate counterarguments to @Ducksicle's post. Change the trials, force staff to play all games while they're still learning the tools they have at their disposal, and give them extra guidance with games that are not 'Vanilla PvP'. I agree with most of what @shihanna said, though I'd argue that there must be a mandatory aspect to this issue rather than one that encourages staff to learn these skills. On the topic of external input, there needs to be some level of collusion with entities such as GI or top players in this process. Their experiences, regardless of whether they are staff or not, should absolutely be taken advantage of in this scenario; trainees should learn what they can from the best players, and apply that knowledge to their moderation work.

This isn't about specialization to a level which is seen within CM/A. This is simply about basic training and knowledge in more than just CW, SKY, and NANO. Differentiating a Bhopper from a DDJ or chicken's flight from fly hacks should be the absolute baseline of knowledge staff have. If they cannot moderate their own games to a basic degree, then they have failed as staff. I am not without fault either - I had no experience in BR and banned someone who was using leap to get up a ledge for flight hacks within my first week of being a trainee.

I think this is a point which players overly-criticize - I definitely agree. Players tend to look down upon staff who ask for a second opinion or any form of help in their moderation. I sometimes felt embarrassed to call in someone more qualified than I was during my trial, but in the end it lowered the chance for mistakes and greatly improved the player experience. It is unfair to give staff crap for needing help. This is where better training comes in though - more extensive and detailed training would greatly improve the chances of success across the board.

I love you a lot oscar, and I do not once doubt your skills as a mentor, but it seems this is not working, or that this is nowhere near enough. As I said, if someone is encouraged to learn something, they will most definitely not learn it to the extent to which they would if it were mandatory.

Staff on other server, regardless of their ranks and permissions, are required to know this. Even so, it is the absolute basis of all PvP-based cheats and can greatly help with recognizing other client modifications. I don't think this point is adequately excused with "they don't need to know". After all, the whole arguing point of this thread is the fact that staff don't inherently need to know the skills we're asking them to learn, but having them at one's hands greatly decreased the chance for future mistakes to happen.

Again, this is true. SSM is not a game where false bans usually occur, but to our credit, these bans shouldn't happen at all. Disavowing this whole thread by saying "mistakes happen" is not the way to handle things - the staff team should be doing their best to prevent any case of false bans regardless of their circumstances. If there are players who have had this happen before, it is (in my book) more than enough reason to make a change.

StM does a good job. Please do not make any mistake. @Oscaros_ knows better than anyone on this thread how the staff team executes their training. He makes valid points and I agree with much that he has said, the same goes for much of what @Sven has mentioned. The mentors present on Mineplex are the best of the best, and I can attest to that without and doubt. My only issue is that the general training given to staff is not as in-depth as it could be. This is the issue. We simply want more depth - I've said this so many times now.
The StM team is quite large; Toki is a very capable admin. They have the means to expand their trial process, and it should be done. No massive changes need to be made, simply allocating some time for each game every week would do more than enough. Players like us in these threads are more than willing to help and pitch in ideas - it's been said multiple times. I really hope something is invested into this, and that this thread is not simply thrown out the window and excused because "the staff training process is already good enough".
Anything that is adequate can always be improved. Like I said, this has happened before, and it will happen again. A false ban is all it took for be to pop and finally resign, mainly because that mod did not need evidence for the ban, and was not punished or corrected for their actions. It's the staff's word versus that of the less-credible player in these cases; with the punishment system being as it is (with no evidence for movement hacks), there is no coming back from such a ban without great difficulty and turmoil. Why not prevent it in the first place?

 

This is really not the case though. Again, you only mention a very limit number of instances, but in reality we punish thousands of players for various hacking offenses. But most people who are actually hacking don't make posts about it or they are using multiple alts, so they don't care. Even people who are hacking frequently say they aren't hacking.

I somewhat get your point here, but we are not a hive mind, we can't just learn from something one person does/learns. Maybe we could do a bit better for training for specific games like SSM or Champions, but while we do make adjustments, you have to understand staff members are trying to learn, which is why they might ask for a second opinion.

That is not at all what I said though. I just said there is really no way we could train every single staff member every single little minute detail of every game and every hack of every kit. Our activity is monitored constantly, and we would be removed from the staff team if we continued to fail our quotas/did not put work into the staff team. Saying this just sounds rude to all the staff members who spend hours working on the server to help make it better and improve community members experiences.

 

one of my first reports I had coming back on the server was for map exploiting, little did I know that it wasn't actually map exploiting and rather just parkour. The report was still accepted; at this time I was not an experienced player since I hadn't played in over 5 years. I would've though the staff member who looked over it would know better than I did. congrats on another spot-on thread outlining mineplex's core problems

 

This is interesting to me because if I remember correctly, I think I did the same thing when I was in my first couple days/weeks as a Trainee lmao

^^^This! There are things in the staff team that could 100% improve but asking others for a second opinion/help should never be looked down upon. The players that don't want to normalize this are the ones that heavily complain about false punishments or lack of really really basic game knowledge (which a lot of experienced staff do have for every game, but of course new staff members might be iffy on some things). I joined the staff team thinking I knew everything there is to know from my reports as a player and experience on the server for years. And yet I made sooo many mistakes early on for things I didn't even think I'd ever mess up on.

I do know this and agree however the servers that require staff members to recognise reach really easily are usually complete (or almost) pvp servers. Mineplex isn't really, with the likes of NANO, Mixed Arcade, SB, MB, etc. I'm not surprised with how they have it here - half of the popular games do not revolve around pvp + Mineplex was always advertised as a mini-game server rather than a pvp/fighting one. Also, people act as if reach false bans don't happen on those servers; of course they do.

I think QA should stay banning for reach. Many hackers with it are dealt with but I think if you want to heavily decrease chances of false banning people, which I accidentally cut out from your quote but you did mention this, then allowing only a certain group to ban for a hack which does tend to be a grey area is a smart choice.


As for the rest of your arguments, I agree. More in-depth training should be a requirement. Especially considering closeting is becoming an even bigger problem, at least hardwiring fundamentals on every game into the staff members will do a lot more than leaving them partially trained.

 

I'm not going to make my response terribly long since what I wanted to say pretty much has been stated by other users. I will say this though - as an ex-mentor and training to become one again, I 100% agree that there could be some new methods implemented to train staff members for the basics of games with abilities like SSM. I've actually been an advocate for this for months. I believe the staff team should at least know the basics of these games, because I will admit that false bans in games like SSM are more frequent than in other games. With what Sven said, hopefully there will be new training methods in place or at least a document outlining the basics of these games. I definitely agree with you there, something should be done.

If staff members are prioritizing their game rather than helping players, then they will be dealt with by their mentors. One of the fundamentals of being a staff member is helping players over playing games, and this idea is enforced throughout a Trainee's trial. If they are found to not be doing so, they will be handled accordingly. You're also free to send evidence of this happening to any mentor since it's not tolerated. If you're specifically talking about StaffRequest, then that's a different story, although you probably know what I'm gonna say after that so I won't say it.

I understand your frustration, however there's not much you as a community member can do about it unfortunately. I do hope, again, that some type of method or document outlining abilities in games like SSM for staff members. And as a whole, staff members do make mistakes. If a false ban occurs occasionally, then that's just a mistake. But if they start to happen often, then I do believe that there should be something in place to prevent them from happening at such a rate.

 

^That is my point, you are using an extremely small sample size of the couple people who have issues, making it out like false bans are constantly happening, when that is not the reality. They are a very small minority of the punishments issued.

You don't know exactly what they saw, so you can't really say that. This would also be like saying if you made a silly mistake on a test, you deserve a 0 on the test, and to get kicked out of school. That is not how it works, we are all entitled to mistakes, as long as we learn from them and are going out of our way to learn.

I do agree there could be room for improvement, but if you haven't experienced a trainee trial, it is hard to understand how our internal training procedures work.

But saying just because someone has a personal life they shouldn't be staff is just-. No staff member purposefully false-punishes players, we have no reason to. And while it is important to help players, and there are circumstances where we have to stop what we are doing to help, if we are just being requested to deal with a hacker (in something like staffrequest - not in our own game), we can finish our game. Again, we are voluntary staff members and we are allowed to play on the server we enjoy too. Yes we have more restrictions, but at the end of the day, if all we were forced to do was moderate all day, I don't think the staff team would be that big. You are not really asking for quality, you are asking for something completely different, that would just make it impossible to find any suitable staff.

This will be my last post regarding this. It does not really seem to be going anywhere positive, so I feel it is best to just leave it at this. I am not 100% disagreeing with you, there are changes that need to be made, and we all understand that. It takes time to improve how things are done, and as someone who has been staff a couple separate times, I believe the process has gotten much better. With that being said, I do think there is a good way to go about these things, and not a good way, and there were times when it seemed like you were more focused on insulting the staff members who are here to help you, than actually changing how things are done. I respect that you are not just trying to call out a staff member for not knowing something. At the end of the day, as repeated a million times now, we are human, and make mistakes and can learn from that.

Again, I completely understand where you are coming from, and I hope you can understand my point of view as well. I hope we can make these improvements to better out staff team and community.

 

Sheeesh y’all type a lot, y’all should consider adding tl;dr to your posts cause holy moly.

That being said, most mods know how to properly ban, you’re referring to a small minority of the staff team who aren’t well versed in more in-depth games. What’s common knowledge to you may not be for them. Put yourself in their perspective and understand they mean well.

As for the 3 block reach thing, yeah idrk, that’s kinda a yikes that recruiters and StM don’t check that sort of knowledge within their respective teams.

Keep in mind not all moderation members are pvpers by nature and that some just enjoy playing nano bc it’s fun so once again to hammer this point, what’s seems like common knowledge that spider has triple jump, really might not be at all.

Like I only found out that tnt doesn’t damage your own teammate in sg2 bc I don’t main that game, but you should be assured that 99% of the time the staff team knows what they are doing and if they don’t they go and ask for “a second opinion” to make sure the punishment is correct.

TL;DR, what’s common knowledge to one person isn’t to another, staff do their best to make sure the punishment is right.

 

Good to hear! Thank you for being proactive and listening to us, we appreciate it!
Some important info to add to such a document for staff would be hitbox, movement, and anticheat details. There isn't much, but it's important to understand, especially for PvP. I assume I can't talk about how smash mobs interacts with GWEN notifications for staff, but pointers such as how Guardian's hitbox is always a block's displacement from its kit would be an important point to make. Including the fact that hitbox looking direction is also not reliable is important as well; the Y coordinate of a player's looking direction matches the kit instead of the player, and hitboxes will spontaneously 'freak out' and spasm during gameplay, mimicking KA headsnaps, even though it is not the true looking direction of a player. Staff should not rely on hitbox information for bans.
Basics on how to triple jump from ground and off blocks would also be good information to have present - as well as a list of known/commonly used glitches (smash kit swapping, glitching into blocks and structures with wither and enderman - especially on Ancient Islands etc...)
Thanks once again for your efforts, hopefully we'll see more love given to Smash Mobs and other modes with more modified gameplay.